Greetings from the British Empire!
Until 1903 (when charger-loading capability finally came along with the "Rifle, Short, Magazine Lee-Enfield) British/Canadian rifle cartridges were always packaged in packets of 10 rounds, wrapped in paper and tied with twine (the military equivalent of Mary Poppins' "brown paper packages tied up with string" in the song "My Favourite Things ....
)
As you can see, the outer wrapper of these packets was always printed/stamped with information identifying the contents ...
Various patterns of "Box, Ammunition, Small Arms", in which these packets were stored and transported, were standardized over the years, with details for each being published in the British War Department's "List of Changes in War Materiel and in Patterns of Military Stores" ("L.o.C.") but the general form for all was unpainted wood construction, usually screwed together but sometimes having some dovetailed joints, with an opening in the center top, accessible via a sliding wooden cover. (From the time of the Martini-Henry, if not earlier, these boxes usually had a tinned sheet-metal lining, but that is a feature that is difficult if not impossible to duplicate in reproduction boxes.)
Here are details of the Mark XI/XII S.A. ammunition box as used with Martini-Henry cartridges -
As mentioned in the text of this L.o.C. entry, earlier versions were not dovetailed where the sides and ends joined but were instead entirely screwed together, and some of them were reinforced with metal (tinned iron or, later, copper) bands around the ends -
During that period, all such boxes had spliced rope handles at the ends (or perhaps only one end in the case of pistol ammunition or "half-boxes" for rifle ammunition) secured there by wooden cleats (grooved at the back to accommodate the rope handle) screwed to the end of the box.
Primary labelling was by means of a paper label pasted to the sliding top cover, usually duplicating the information printed on the paper wrappers of the cartridge packets inside. although usually with the addition of the total number of cartridges inside;
Additional information (e.g.. a packing date and "lot number") was often stencilled on the box ...
... or (in the case of the date and place of manufacture of the box, and its "Mark" designation) stamped into the wood on one of the ends ... as on this Mark IV box produced in 1873 at the Royal Laboratory, Woolwich -
From the time of the adoption of the .303 Magazine Lee-Metford rifle in 1888 (and its successor the Magazine Lee-Enfield which followed in 1896) .303 cartridges were also packed in paper-wrapped packets of 10 rounds stored and transported in similar wooden small arms ammunition boxes - for at least ten years in the existing pattern(s) in use for Martini-Henry cartridges ... although those boxes would hold considerably more (i.e. 1,100) .303 cartridges.
At about the time of the Boer War, a new pattern of somewhat smaller box holding only 750 .303 cartridges - the "Box, ammunition, S.A., 750 rounds .303 inch (Mark I)" - was introduced , and a modified version of the 1,100 round box was also adopted (Mark XV). Here are the L.o.C. entries for them -
Unfortunately, neither L.o.C. entry includes an illustration, but if you wanted to try to reproduce either of these patterns (rather than just using an earlier pattern (such as was used with Martini-Henry cartridges and shown above ... which would obviously be entirely correct, historically, for the Boer War era) I believe the larger 1,100 round box would be fairly similar to the earlier boxes either, subject to any specific differences noted in the L.o.C. entry. And I THINK this is a version of the smaller 750 round box introduced under L.o.C. 10750 - if only because the original packing date stencilled on the end is "25, 11, 99" (i.e. 25 November 1899) -